Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Landscapes & Literature

One form of
escapism is often in the form of books. Sometimes, these books will often be
set inside a landscape, be it a real life landscape with fictional characters or
a fictional landscape (The Lord of the Rings fictional world of ‘Middle Earth’
as an example).

In Bill
Brandt’s book, ‘Literary Britain’, he has taken photographs ranging from
landscapes to houses and castles and has put these images alongside various
pieces of prose, poetry etc. However, these texts are to be used as merely
small and helpful clues to try and fully understand what the picture is trying
to get across.The text becomes second
place to the image itself, an example of this style is detailed below.

Withens

Emily Bronte

‘Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr Heathcliff’s
dwelling, “Wuthering” being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of
the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure,
bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed. One may guess
the power of the north wind blowing over the edge by the excessive slant of a
few stunted firs at the end of the house, and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching
their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had
foresight to build it strong; the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall,
and the corners defended with large jutting stones’

Wuthering Heights

On its own, the image is an emotive and powerful image of a
single house on a hillside. If one has read the book that the passage has been
taken from, it fires up their imagination and transports them to that particular
place inside their minds.

The image below is a bit darker in tone as it depicts two
gravestones in a landscape. The text that accompanies it is from ‘A Journey to the Western Islands of
Scotland’ by Dr Samuel Johnson. As I am not familiar with this book, I am
going to analyse the image instead.

The Graveyard at Strath

Linking this into the idea of escapism, it speaks to me that
the only way that you can almost truly ‘Escape’ into a landscape is to be
buried in it. When we go on holiday, it is often for a few weeks and the sense
of escapism is more down to a psychological feeling (obviously physical as
well, but predominantly psychological as we still take our troubles to a landscape).